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Some­times, film fes­ti­vals speed by so quickly that there isn’t enough time to pub­lish all of our con­tent. Some­times, the con­tent is so good that we have to pub­lish it later because we love it so much. This is some of that content.

Poster for AAAAAAAAH! by Steve Oram

The Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val can some­times seem like a very pompous affair, with all of its line-ups and pass hold­ers and fancy venues. It can be refresh­ing when all of the slow-burners are inter­rupted by a real wild card. Though, in the case of this year’sAAAAAAAAH!, directed by British film­maker Steve Oram, I might not use the word ‘refresh­ing’, more likely ‘bizarre’. It was like Coro­na­tion Street but with tea-bagging involved. Or a Planet of the Apes directed by Tommy Wiseau. Whichever of the two you can visu­al­ize more clearly. In plain terms, the film was vio­lent, graphic, and sex­u­ally explicit. The char­ac­ters car­ried out their lives like apes, and I do not mean that metaphorically.

After accli­ma­tiz­ing myself to the bizarre grunts and phal­lic gore as best I could, I saw a very famil­iar story play­ing out onscreen. I was watch­ing a fam­ily drama, albeit a deranged one. The matri­arch of the fam­ily ditches her hus­band and instead gets freaky with a younger man, much to the dis­may of her angsty, brood­ing daugh­ter. While Mom has fun with her new suitor, the daugh­ter seethes in the shad­ows, until even­tu­ally she falls in love with an equally despon­dent fel­low. How­ever, hap­pi­ness can’t last for­ever. I won’t give away the final bit of the movie, but I will say that healthy famil­ial bound­aries are bla­tantly ignored by all. It’s enough to make you nau­seous, to say the least. The char­ac­ters’ ape-like behav­ioural pat­terns are purely shock­ing at first, but even­tu­ally become a sly cri­tique on regres­sion in soci­ety and per­haps a comedic ver­sion of pri­mal patri­archy. Though, I really can’t say any­thing with com­plete con­fi­dence. I know there must have been a the­matic direc­tion within the film, but I was way too busy try­ing to for­get the array of flac­cid mem­bers and food spit­tle. This is not to say that it was a bad film, I just don’t know if I will ever get over it.

Still from Jason Lei Howden’s Death­gasm

A film that I almost over­looked and ended up thor­oughly enjoy­ing was Jason Lei Howden’s Death­gasm. I bought my ticket late in the game and went to the mid-afternoon screen­ing at the Gold­corp Cen­tre for the Arts rather than the evening one a few days ear­lier at the Rio The­atre. Even though I might have missed out on the late night atmos­phere, Death­gasm was still a seri­ous treat. A very bloody, campy, and obscene treat. Exem­plary in its dry, tongue-in-cheek Kiwi humour, this cin­e­matic gore-fest poked the per­fect amount of fun at both cult sen­si­bil­ity and met­al­head culture.

After the death of his mother, Brodie, moves in with his severely reli­gious rel­a­tives and their bully of a son. While find­ing solace in the local record store, Brodie befriends fel­low hard­core fan Zakk, and the two form a band. But when Brodie stum­bles across a decrepit sheet of music and the two decide to play it them­selves, death and ter­ror reign down on their sleepy New Zealand town in the form of a demon-zombie apoc­a­lypse, until only their mis­fit group of friends are left to defeat the abound­ing evil. How­den directs the absur­dity with skill, and uses genre tropes like low-fi spe­cial effects and hyper­bolic char­ac­ter to his advan­tage. How­ever, cult hor­ror is noto­ri­ously misog­y­nis­tic, and though this film tried to break from that pat­tern, it was not entirely suc­cess­ful. The film con­tained three note­wor­thy female char­ac­ters, one being Brodie’s high school crush turned demon-fighting badass, another a low-ranking ser­vant of hell who even­tu­ally usurps the head title, and the third a record store clerk who reads for­tunes on the side. They oper­ate in very dif­fer­ent spheres and never inter­act with one another except dur­ing the film’s cli­max, and though they pos­sess a cer­tain amount of agency they still play a pas­sive role in the film as a whole. I knew it was com­ing, but I still didn’t appre­ci­ate the genre sex­ism. How­ever, apart from those few snags, Death­gasm was still a rau­cous bit of fun, pre­sent­ing itself as a very clever addi­tion to the cult canon.

SAD Mag

SAD Mag is an independent Vancouver publication featuring stories, art, and design. Founded in 2009, we publish the best of contemporary and emerging artists with a focus on inclusivity of voices and views, exceptional design, and film photography.